


Tenderness

by seaweedredandbrown



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Consensual, Hate Sex, M/M, Mention of tobacco, Not fully vanilla, Panic Attacks, Self-Hatred, Stream of Consciousness, Terrible and regrettable life choices, Wordcount: 15.000-25.000, attempt at canon compliance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-21
Updated: 2018-03-21
Packaged: 2019-04-05 12:48:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14044596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seaweedredandbrown/pseuds/seaweedredandbrown
Summary: There's one moment of warmth in the middle of all this. But this is about everything else. How they fight and they fuck when nobody's there to stop them. How they save the world and cannot save themselves. How what they crave is always what tears them apart.





	Tenderness

You spend a lifetime of loneliness. You are too smart, too quick-witted; you dance with numbers and sing with genetics. They do not understand. They have their games, their codes, their petty little feuds.

You can’t communicate - you try, you get hurt. Rejected. Left behind.

Alone, alone, alone.

You start working. The work is good. The work is something you can do. Something that they can relate to.

You work, work, work. It’s not enough. You work harder. You work faster. Maybe if you work even more, they will -

They don’t.

They never like you.

The world becomes bleak and weary for your wonderful mind. Your heart is a bitter little thing, dry and forgotten, buried under drugs or chalk dust.

They don’t like you. It shouldn’t hurt, but it does. They don’t like you, you don’t like them. You tell yourself that it doesn’t matter, because the world is about to end. You build yourself an inner fortress that nobody can penetrate. They’ll never get to like you, now; they’ll never get to know you. Once or twice, you can’t help but try to reach out to them - but they mock you, they think you look funny. You fail to see what looks have to do with anything, but you’re too thin, too chubby, and they laugh, and it hurts.

It hurts.

You vow never to be hurt ever again.

You grow into those limbs - they notice, but it’s too late. You wince under the sting of the needle, you get used to the friction of tweed. You go after them, you hide from their view.

Proximity or seclusion, mindless sex or celibacy, the result is the same. They might smile, they might talk to you for a little while. But they never stay.

They don’t like you. And frankly, you can’t blame them - you don’t even like yourself.

But he does.

He does and his first letter is outrageous in its ridiculousness, but he likes you. He tolerates you, at least. His letters are like magic, dripping sweet drops of friendship in the desert of your soul.

You don’t know how it works, but suddenly you’re not alone anymore. He’s here. Somebody to talk to. Somebody to argue with. Somebody who gets you, for lack of a better word. 

Oh, he’s wrong, of course - you’re the only one entrusted with letting the light of knowledge shine upon the universe, but he’s quite close. You tell him how wrong he is, and he tells you how wrong you are - and it’s the most fun you’ve had in years.

Someone told you you smile more. Someone wonders why you hide his letters under your bed. You don’t answer. They wouldn’t understand. They don’t like you.

You like him, you decide. That’s what liking someone must feel like. Your heart is singing in its chains, you learn his letters by heart - you don’t even need to. You just do.

You surprise yourself with hope and dreams. You know those won’t end well.

So you decide you probably don’t like him, after all. You’re not the sort to like people. You’re not good with words and feelings are best left to books and poetry - but you enjoy his literary company. You don’t know if he likes you. You look him up on the internet; he’s pleasing to look at, but you don’t know what to do with this information. A lot of people are pleasing to look at; so are a lot of paintings and landscapes. That doesn’t mean anything. This puzzles you, so you bury it under even more theories and data and algorithms. You don’t need to think about that; you have work to do. The world is ending, after all.

You work. You write.

The world ends slower than you thought. You build Jaeger, you study Kaiju. Years pass. They get used to the war, the apocalypse, the impending doom. You don’t. He keeps on writing. He keeps on arguing. His letters are the only thing that keeps you sane.

You agree to meet. You are nervous, but there’s this conference, and he’ll be there, and…

You meet.

It doesn’t go well.

You hate each other. You hate him.

He hates you.

Your world shatters. He wasn’t like this. He wasn’t supposed to be like this! He reminds you of them - too stiff, too loose, with those stupid tattoos and the lamest haircut you’ve ever seen. His letters knew when to ask and when to respect your silence. He doesn’t. He pushes and grates and shouts and insults and -

He hates you.

So you hate him. From the bottom of your heart.

You’ve got a lifetime of loneliness ahead, after all.

You were right about people. You were right about them not liking you. But there’s no time to cry and no time to be depleted, because the world is still ending. The world never stops to end. You get back to work.

The work is harder, now. The work is good. The work makes a difference; they still don’t like you, but they tolerate you, now. They even speak of you, of your achievements. The work gives you recognition, validation and something to keep your brilliant mind occupied. It doesn’t matter if they talk behind your back or if they refuse to share your lab; your work is better than theirs.

So you work, work, work, because at that point, that’s all you can do.

You work when they win, you work when they lose, you work when nobody else does.

Then a few years down the road, they make you work together. With him.

He’s still his same insufferable self, but his work is still the same as well, a hidden diamond among the rough of mediocrity. You are a spark and he’s an explosion; science makes great progress at the expense of anyone within an earing range of your shouting matches.

They start refusing to work with you two. Something about blasting Bach at full volume to drown the utter manure he calls music; something about leaving kaiju guts all around his desk just to spite him.

You work better on your own, anyway. You ignore them.

You can’t ignore him. He drives you mad. You let him know. They used to beat you, when you were a child. His words hurt more than their stones.

The world keeps on ending. They say they’ll build a wall.

It’s never going to work.

So now it’s only you two - only you and the Kaiju, along with a handful of personnel in one of the last Shatterdomes. It feels like it’s only you, though, only you two, the cane and the tattooed arms, against monsters of unfathomable heights.

It’s scary, you have to admit, in those fleeting moments before you collapse into sleep. You’re scared and alone. He hates you.

You shout louder, your insults get meaner, you hate him with an all-consuming passion.

Somebody tells you that this won’t end well.

You don’t care.

It’s already ended. It’s already not well.

Yet… Yet your hatred is returned. If he hates you as much as you hate him - if there is one thing in this world that can make some sort of sense, balance, justice - then among the chaos, at the end of the world, you’d almost be content.

This is how it begins.

_ _ _

The first time it happens, Tendo Choi is around and drops his coffee right as your fist collides with the soft skin of his cheek. You’ll thank him later, when you’ve realised that the bloody madman could have beaten you up with his fucking cane had your friend not intervened.

Your friend. It takes quite some time for that one to sink in - that you’ve made a friend here, whose fashion sense is almost as good as yours - and that’s good because you don’t really need to be mentally available for another one of Marshall Pentecost’s stern looks of disappointment.

You take a day off and sit on the edge of your bed, your palm still curled in a fist, black-polished nails digging your own flesh, unable to shake the feeling of that white porcelain on your knuckles. It felt much softer than it looked, maybe because you missed the cheekbones.

Incredibly enough, the stuffy bastard does not even lodge so much as a complaint.

“I would like to present my apologies.”

He looks so smug about it, that dickhead, with his hands on his cane and the blue-red-dark-green hue on his cheek.

“What I said about your… fitness for the task at hand was uncalled for, Dr. Geiszler.”

You think that you’ve seen a lot of dicks before, but all of them looked more appetising than Hermann fucking Gottlieb trying to apologise. (It's a terrible pun, and you know it).

“But I will not withdraw my comments about how your childish worship of… ”

Oh, the little fucker. You’re so going to kill him.

_ _ _

The second instance occurs in the badly-lit corridor between your quarters and his, at precisely equal distance of each.

You wish you didn’t remember the exact proceedings of the incident, but you do.

So does Sasha Kaidonovsky. She’s the one who grabs you by the collar and lifts you half a meter above the ground, until you let go of your cane and he collapses on the floor, his hands around his throat, desperately trying to catch his breath.

Your friend drawls in your ear but you’re not listening. You can’t keep your eyes off the bruise where your cane was pushing his neck against the wall; the red marks clash with the vividly coloured tentacles that rise from below his undershirt.

It’s a full-torso work, you realise. Not just sleeves. You hold onto that piece of newly acquired knowledge as Sasha shakes the anger out of you, as Aleksis brings him to med bay when he really can’t talk anymore - wouldn’t that be nice, were it to last! - and as Marshall Pentecost falls short of putting you into confinement.

You stop trying to classify the exact hue of the bruise on an hexadecimal colour table when you realise that Sasha hasn’t left your side.

You share a cigarette on the balcony above the mess. She tells you of how she used to hurt someone she loved, a long time ago. You nod but you do not listen. You wish you could lose yourself to the vastness of the sea below. You don’t think you’re deserving of anyone’s friendship - especially hers.

You wonder what’s taken over you. You don’t remember ever being like this.

You think of the black waves, the sound of the wind, but all you can see is the red graze on the pink of his skin; the hissing noise of suffocating. You despair.

You don’t apologise when you come back to work two days later. Neither does he. The mark is almost gone and his voice is back; thirty-seven minutes later, the little bugger is shouting again.

_ _ _

There is a third time.

And a fourth.

Fists and kicks and bruises, a broken nose and a drowning attempt.

They really should fire you, but you’re the only ones left, so they don’t. They don’t even bring you to Pentecost anymore. They just patch you up and roll their eyes and shrug, not always in that order.

“You got weird kinks, brother,” says Tendo as he dresses a nasty scratch on your forearms. How could those hands hurt so much, when they move so gracefully across the blackboard? If this ruins Yamarashi, you’re not going to be accountable for your actions.

“A kiss with a fist, Dr. Gottlieb, is worse than no kiss at all,” Mako’s voice is soft and her moves are gentle as she cleans a bite wound - a bite wound! He bit you. He really did, with those perfect teeth of his!

_ _ _

Nails and teeth - you should have known that it would come to this.

It’s the tenth or the twelfth or the hundredth time. You’re alone with him in the lab, and the light is low. Electricity shortage - the world is ending, remember? - means that the heating system has been steadily malfunctioning for the past six weeks. It means that you’re huddling in your parka and leather jacket, arguing in the blue glow of your computer screens, and it’s three a.m., and you can’t listen to music, and you need a cigarette.

You’re talking about cellular regeneration or advanced physics or the weather - at this point, it doesn’t even matter.

Last time you said “hi,” he said “do go fuck yourself.”

But it’s late and the poor souls sleeping a floor above have been complaining, so you’re not so much shouting as hissing, screeching, two cats arching their backs, all bristling fur and sharpened fangs.

When was the last time you slept? When was the last time you ate?

You don’t know. You don’t care.

You can feel the darkness moving around you, the hungry spirit of hatred; the shadows pulling you away from the light and into violence.

You can tell when they’re about to start, now. Your little… moments. You ready yourself, muscles tensed and senses on high alert.

The air is heavy with anger and something else, something powerful and raw, an animal urge to make him shut the fuck up.

The sound of his voice - that one thing the letters couldn’t have warned you about - you’ve always hated the sound of his voice.

It begins.

_ _ _

He raises his fist to punch you but you throw yourself at him first, grabbing his wrists and tackling him to the floor. He growls - he literally growls - in anger, but you’re stronger than you look. He struggles and kicks and you contemplate reaching out for your cane and beating him to a pulp, but then he’d still be making noise, and that’s the noise you want to stop. You want the peace and the quiet and bloody Newton out of your head.

_ _ _

He’s straddling you to the ground and you can’t shake the fucking bastard off you, fucking hell, the man is nothing but skin, maths, and bone, you’re getting dominated by a fucking scrawny nerd who shouldn’t be this strong, how fucking low can you fucking get?

If he's furor, then you're rage, and you yank and you jerk, but you can't bounce his fingers off your wrists. They feel hot and sweaty and the nails digs in your flesh and it hurts and you hate him.

Usually, someone barges in around this point - you'd even kill to see that Aussie bastard, fucking hell - but tonight it's just you and him, in the frigid blue light of the lab and his face is very close now, and he reeks of cigarette and old-fashioned aftershave. He is punctuating his insults with calculations, or his calculations with insults, you don’t know anymore.

You wish he would just shut the fuck up but he slaps you when you bite him. Your cheek burns but your hand is freed; straight it goes for the bulge in his trousers, grabbing the rough tweed and - checkmate, dude: angry boners are a thing. He yelps in outrage and you can’t help but laugh - are you enjoying yourself, you fucking perv?!

Shit, you said that out loud.

_ _ _

A mere minute’s distraction is enough for the shame and the humiliation to wash over your cheeks in deep shades of red; it’s also enough for him to wrestle his way out from under you. For a moment, you’re both crawling, entangled limbs, pulling hair and gnawing teeth, until he gets back on top, and blast it, you know your legs won’t be strong enough to push you upwards again, so you just lay there, struggling more for dignity’s sake than a real chance of salvation. There’s madness in those green eyes and your hell is paved with murderous intentions.

He is threatening you, crowding you, and his face is too close, way too close. You can smell the ammonia, the sweat; you can hear the raspy rhythm of his breathing. He huffs and puffs, black strands of hair plastered on his forehead, and you catch a glimpse of them again - the little tentacles, the scales, peeking out of his undershirt, a world of unknown colours and miraculous shapes, hidden under the linen.

You want to see them. You want to see them up close. You want to study their hues and their outlines. You want… He speaks, you’re not listening. You want. Yes. Maybe he’s right - maybe you’re a pervert and matter has taken over the mind.

_ _ _

He twists a hand free, and you think, damn, this is the end. This one’s gonna blow. You raise an arm to protect your face, but he goes for your tie instead and pull you into the kiss of a lifetime.

_ _ _

The primal impulse makes sense, you’ll tell yourself later - you wanted him to shut up but you were about to need your free hand again and he was still holding the other one down, so your mouth was the only thing left to cover his with. That doesn’t explain the biting, but his lips taste of blood, grease and something else; something that is just his and his only. It’s the most exquisite thing.

You want more. You need more. You’re kissing him, all tongue and teeth and you can’t stop, you can’t stop, and you weren’t raised like this, and there should be something about consent and propriety and -

You stop thinking. You kiss him until you’re out of breath.

Did you really think it would end here?

_ _ _

You didn’t expect him to kiss you and, frankly, you should have. You’ve watched enough anime to know where this was going. You didn’t expect to like it either; perhaps that’s also something you should have seen coming.

He tastes like tobacco and mint; strong flavours with a fresh aftertaste. His lips are thin and soft and just the right amount of chapped. His kisses are sloppy and wet and you love, love, love it. You uncurl your fist to lose your fingers in his hair, to pull him closer. His free hand is somewhere on your back, between your jacket and your shirt, exploring, discovering, grabbing, conquering. You wish to lose yourself in the kiss and not think of whatever is about to come next - the awkwardness, the hatred, the whatever - but you can’t. Your brain can never be overclocked, no matter how many signals your synapses are firing, you can’t lose control, you can’t stop analysing and registering and processing and -

You should probably talk about this, you think, mostly because you’re going to have to let go of his wrist at some point - you want to reach lower, even lower. You want to suck him dry, and that will be much easier if he’s not actively trying to murder you.

Usually, the talking comes before tearing each other’s clothes apart, even slurred and hazy, but - have you ever been sober during sex before?

You can’t recall. This makes you stop, and you look into his eyes, reddened and dilated by desire, and it hits you like a truck. You’re about to have sex with him and you’ve spent enough time around Gender Studies majors to know how these things are supposed to go, so you gulp, you try to steady your breath. You’re both panting and sweaty and you should be getting cold but you’re burning.

For a moment, there is something akin to silence, to a ceasefire, among the breathlessness and the dripping sweat.

You slowly unwrap your fingers from his wrists - you leave just your palms there, pushing him lightly enough that he could break free should the need arise. He looks at you, incredulous, waiting; you lick your lips, you need to ask this.

But you can’t, you can’t possibly ask him if he wants to sleep with you. That’d be admitting that you want it, too, and if your brain helpfully lets you know that letting him kissing you breathless was admission enough, you ignore it entirely.

So you let go of him - sweat and warmth had glued your skins together; your hands are cold, now - and you get up, and you walk away, to some dark corners of your part of the lab where you can slam your head on your desk in peace.

_ _ _

He breaks the kiss and you start thinking again; or what passes for thinking when all your thoughts are about touching him, tracing the outlines of the fantastic beasts on his back, all the bruises and the scratches, the bones and the muscles, everything. You want to touch everything, you want to explore, you want to possess. To own him entirely. His skin burns through his shirt, you can feel it, you’re so close - but he leaves. He leaves. He is leaving!

It’s cold, here, on the floor, and you’ve never properly heard until now how noisy that parka of yours could be - creak, creak, it goes as you roll around to get up on your good leg - and your drenched limbs stick to your undershirt, and you’re probably stinking, and what just happened, well, don’t lie to yourself, you know exactly what just happened.

You take one deep breath, leaning against the wall, to try and regain a simulacrum of composure.

Facts and figures. Safety in numbers. Probabilities.

You don’t need poetry, you don’t need promises, but you do need to map a logical course of action. Back to the blackboard with this one - almost literally.

He kissed you - no, you kissed him - after an unnumbered amount of physical confrontations, which stemmed from your shared hatred, which came from the distasteful little infatuation you may have nursed for him in your letters-writing youth - a common history which you’ve never let impede on your work, thank you very much.

Nothing ever impedes on your work. You’ve become a master at distancing yourself from your raging emotions and your treacherous body; neither have ever helped with the math, have they?

A noise somewhere to your left, the loud thump of an heavy binder thrown to the floor. Oh dear, has the madman taken to thrashing the pigsty he calls his desk?

You sigh and close your eyes.

You will not be dealing with this. Not tonight. You will take a shower, go to your room and allow yourself the luxury of six hours of uninterrupted sleep. Surely, by the light of day, all of this…

Is he crying? It doesn’t sound like crying.

Very well. Shower. Rest. Breakfast. Breakfast sounds about right, doesn’t it? Ah, how good you’ve gotten at this - ignoring the pain in your leg, the cold shivers on your back, the obvious signs of remaining arousal. You take another breath and open your eyes in the damp darkness. Your computer screen has faded to black; you should check that your latest data have been processed and then switch the damn thing off.

It’s not crying at all. The breaths are too fast and too irregular.

He’s hyperventilating.

_ _ _

Sensory overload-induced panic attack.

Or something.

You don’t know anymore.

What you do know - sweaty palms sweaty brow cold heart burning hands - is that you kissed Hermann Gottlieb - no he kissed you the damn bastard he really did his lips they tasted like nicotine - and, as the fucking song goes, you liked it.

You liked it a lot. You fucking idiot. You’re not supposed to like him a lot.

Any sound, any noise, anything is pouring oil over the blaze of your nerves. You are fire and ice and despair and desire and a thousand of other things, all shaken up, all mixed up in a deadly cocktail.

Be real for once, Newt. You are not a deadly cocktail.

That doesn’t keep you from sending your folder flying, along with whatever was laying around on your desk. It rains pens, gnawed pencils and half-used erasers in the darkness; it awakes your computer from its slumber, and it’s four a.m. and you should probably -

You should probably not scream like this, but fuck it, you’re angry. Screaming helps. Screaming helps you catch your breath.

Too much, too much, too much of everything.

You want the whole world to stop and leave you alone for a little while.

You take one very long, very deep breath, and you scream again, and you bang the wall with your fist, and it hurts, but screaming helps, the pain helps; because it focuses your attention on one single thing - the burn at the back of your throat, the burn on your hand - you need to focus on one single thing - you need to redirect your senses, but right now, it’s -

“What is the meaning of this?”

_ _ _

“You fucking tell me.”

He stands there, shoulders down, looking at his feet, like a child being scolded.

A child, indeed.

He’s always been very much a child, hasn’t he?

And children must be properly taught.

“What the actual fuck, I mean, the fuck was that? I fucking hate you, man. I’ve never hated anyone more in my life, and, by the way, that was the worst kiss ever, I mean, don’t you know that you’re not supposed to do that with your teeth…”

You wish for only one thing, one very little thing in this world, and that is for Newton Geiszler to stop talking, or, at the very least, to stop gesticulating and shrieking in his horrible usual way.

You sigh. (You’ve been doing that a lot, tonight.)

You’re very cold and very warm at the same time.

It’s not half as nice as it sounds.

A well-mapped course of action runs like a decision tree. If one of the desired outcomes - a night of sleep and a hearty breakfast - becomes unavailable, reason dictates that you follow the next best one.

It’s reason, then, that dictates that you take your glasses off and neatly fold them on the nearest surface available.

You straighten up.

It’s high time to make him stop talking.

_ _ _

“I’d like to suggest-” His voice sounds cold and distant. “-a mutually-beneficial arrangement.”

You need a double take, an actual double take, to make sure that your ears didn’t fail you and that you didn’t punch him on the spot. The man has balls, you gotta hand it to him.

_ _ _

You expected silence. You got yet another monologue instead. Has this man never heard of quiet obedience? 

“... but, like, I’ve probably done it with more men than women before, so that’s, like, not the problem, it’s just that, oh, there’s a world-ending invasion out there, and maybe we should go back to work instead, or was that, oh yes, was that some sort of very intricate plot to try and distract me from the fact that you are wrong, I mean, you cannot absolutely predict that…”

He’s raising up his head; his eyes meet yours. They are beautiful, but that’s besides the point. You liked him better with his head down, submissive and ignorant.

Submissive, yes.

You like that idea.

_ _ _

OK, OK, maybe, just maybe, you haven’t stopped talking because he looks hot and… OK, you admit it, he does look hot, drawn in the fluorescent light of the Kaiju tank, all long fingers and cheekbones.

He’s always looked hot, really, but now isn’t the time for your brain to play against you.

He’s getting closer, too, and he’s taller, why he is taller than you? This is unfair, you’re feeling crowded and aroused and you talk, talk, talk your way out of it as fast as you fucking can.

That cold, crooked smile is doing something to your guts, you can’t stop talking, because if you do, then he’ll talk, and if you hear his voice right now, you’re not sure if you’ll be able to control yourself in his presence ever again.

_ _ _

He’s rambling.

You can smell him again. Ammonia, sweat and everything else.

Disgusting. Good.

You lean in, and your lips brush past the pink, warm skin of his ears.

_ _ _

"What about going back to work, doctor?”

The world explodes.

Your senses shatter.

Your shirt is torn apart.

You stop thinking.

You want, want, want him so much. It hurts.

\- because you’re not ready because there is no lube because you want him so much right here right now on the lab floor disgusting appealing you don’t care his skin is red with your biting and your blood is he is he is yours and you are his -

Your regain your senses a minute before he does, and you snap a picture of him as he climaxes, before crumbling next to him. He’s on his back and you’re on your side.

Both your arms outreached, your fingertips almost touching.

It’s electrifying.

_ _ _

Things do not change much, after that.

Humanity is still on the verge of destruction. The work is still here. The work is still hard. Each decommissioned Jaeger feels like a personal affront. Each loss is an intimate mourning, each victory a fleeting reprieve.

You find results of a clean blood test in his name tucked between two boxes of chalk a few hours after you’ve slid yours under his keyboard. You also find several stashes of condoms and lube in various locations. Some of them are quite creative - behind the fire extinguisher, really?

And you work, and you forget to eat, and you forget to sleep.

And he works, and he’s always here, and he’s always so noisy, always so talkative.

You might have hoped that your little agreement would ease the tension, the nervous twitch in your jaw every time you hear the sound of his voice. This had been one of the few positive side effects of such arrangements with others in the past: a temporary release, a relaxation of the body, a change in interpersonal dynamics that you could often twist to your advantage, even if it just meant them leaving you alone at last.

You saw no reason why it would have been different this time. Predictions and probabilities are supposed to be your forte, yet you’ve never been that wrong about anything before.

Perhaps the sample pool was too small for this experiment to yield the same results. Perhaps you should keep trying. Change the variables, one by one. Experiment.

Because no matter what you do, no matter what he does, he drives you up the wall. You hate him. You despise him, his stupid clothes, his horrendous tattoos - how they spread beautifully under the ultraviolet light of the slab - his boyish haircut - messy and sweaty under your fingers as you press him further and further around you - his everything, but mostly, mostly, this nasal, high-pitched screech he has the nerve to call his voice - screaming your name in ecstasy.

Well, he is screaming right now, indeed. He’s shouting at the wall, about your common lack of funding. Your dwindling resources enrage you as much, but there is no point in making such a fuss about it, when you have been struggling with those integers for the better part of a -

His voice raises to new heights. A side glance. He’s looking at you.

Oh.

A little pause might be in order, then.

_ _ _

“Some of us are trying to work, Newton, ” he says, scribbling hurriedly the last part of his equation, lest he forgets. “So do me a favour, and shut up!”

He knows, of course he does.

_ _ _

“Make me.”

Folding your glasses. Taking some of your clothes off. Not breaking eye contact.

Everything is absolutely in control.

Until - your skin touches his - it’s not. 

_ _ _

It’s easier that way. It allows you to play defiant and strong and then your mind is quiet - orgasm rides you like a wave - and you can focus again, and your work is all for the better.

The work is all that matters. There is something, something there. The DNA matches but it shouldn’t. You’d need fresher specimens but you can’t really get into a Jaeger yourself. So you fuck Hermann Gottlieb instead.

Or rather, you let Hermann Gottlieb fuck you. It’s almost charity, at this point. The guy probably doesn’t get laid often, not with those weird vintage clothes - scattered on lab demarcation on the floor - those skinny arms - wrapped around you never letting you go - and that posh English - the faintest hint of Prussian ordering you to go deeper and you’re so happy to comply.

Yes, it’s charity, and at least with your mouth on his, he doesn’t get to call you names anymore - well, not that sort of names, at least.

So you get that mouth busy and put your back into it.

You bend over your desk. You bend over his desk. You wank him off in badly lit corridors, you bite his neck and lick his fingers. You suck him off while he leans against his chalkboard and you revel, yes, you revel in his outrage when he sees that he has erased parts of his precious, precious work with his own back.

(You like it, when he’s angry. There’s a man, there’s a soul, behind the clutches, the blazer, the mask of the eccentric outcast. Sometimes, when his pupils dilate and he mouths your name, you think you might just catch a glimpse of that incandescent force of his spirit - so you snap a pic, and maybe you wank to it later, maybe you don’t.

You do not look at it from time to time, just to remind you that his face can do more than just frown. To trace the contour of those O-shaped lips on your screen. No. You don’t.)

_ _ _

When did it become an almost daily occurrence? When did it spill from the relative privacy of the lab into badly-lit corridors at two in the morning, on the roof at the break of dawn, at 4pm in a decommissioned Jaeger bay?

Your enquiring mind wants to know but such matters have never been your forte, so you push them back, back, back, behind the maths and the theories and the sound of the chalk on the board.

Chak, chak. It helps.

Chak, chak. It doesn’t drown out his music or his voice but, chak, chak, it does help.

A little.

Chak, chak, you bury your feelings.

Chak, chak, you don’t need emotions to clutter your brain.

Chak, chak, you like him when he’s on his knees, or bent over his desk.

But it’s when he lifts you up and holds you against the wall that you like him best.

Chak, chak.

_ _ _

You try and go to a club, once. They have good shit there, but none of the goods on display can pique your interest. You fool around, you try to lose yourself in the beat. It works great until they bring you back to make out and they see your ink, as usual. They get angry - something about having a cousin back in San Francisco or some shit - and you leave before you get your teeth knocked out.

You come back to the ‘dome feeling like utter crap, your skin sticky with their sweat and your ears ringing with their disgust. The waves are calling you; the blackness of the water, the cold of the sea. You wish you could jump and drown, but rockstars don’t commit suicide before saving the world, so you settle for a shower instead.

And he’s here. Of course, he is, isn’t he? He’s here because your feet have brought you right to his quarters. To his bathroom. In the corner of which he is currently sitting, drying his hair. He looks so thin and frail, in his tank top and his trunks, bent yet unbroken; scar tissue blooming in red and white fractals on his knee, climbing all the way up to his hips. He straightens up when he sees you, like a snake shakes its sloughed skin and sharpens its fangs.

You decide to ignore him. You’re too upset for this shit.

You discard your shoes and get in the shower with your clothes on. The water is lukewarm at best, so you turn it down all the way to freezing, hoping the cold will chase the burn in your heart away.

Over the sound of the shower, you can hear the scraping of a chair across the tiled floor.

He’s here. Of course he is, isn’t he? 

Sitting in the doorway, head thrown back, leaning against the wall, eyes half-closed, crossed arms.

He is here.

His gaze burns your skin. It pierces through your neck, it slices your throat. You can feel it gliding over each drop dripping down your back.

You plunge your head under the showerhead. The water stinks. It reeks of detergent and acid. You close your eyes.

There’s a terrible, bitter aftertaste in your mouth, but it’s less awful than the rest of your senses right now, so you focus on it for a little while.

Physical sensations, yes. Those are good. Those help.

The tiles are fresh under your feet. The water is blissfully freezing, chasing your feelings down the drain. You are nothing but transport. You ride the waves of an unexpected moment of peaceful mindfulness, the muffling song of the shower echoing on the walls, under the grey light. You let yourself bask in this relative state of not-thinking-too-much. You don’t want to know what you’re doing.

You try to dissociate mind and matter.

It doesn’t work.

Reality comes crashing down.

Your body is ablaze. Your muscles are tensed in anticipation; you can tell it’s about to start, anytime now.

One of your little… moments.

Because they’re always about to start, they’re always there, hovering at the edge of your fingertips - unresolved scientific tensions, conflictive interpersonal interactions.

You don’t mind them. You don’t mind him here.

You open your eyes, turn around and loosen your tie.

_ _ _

The primal urge… This is not a primal urge. This is a conscious decision to get closer. You fill this observation under “label later” and bid your quiet night in goodbye.

You have something more pleasing to do than reading now, anyway.

He is beautiful and flawed.

He wears his demons on his skin.

You observe them, classify them, admire them, one by one. Trespasser. Atticon. Taurax. Yamarashi. The scales, the claws, the fangs. They remind you of a kaleidoscope you use to play with, as a child. When they merge and dance under the water, you follow their lines under his drenched clothes. When you undo his shirt, they spring to life, moving along his muscles. Deltoideus. Pectoralis major. Oliquus abdomini - you lose track as his top falls in a wet mess on the tiles.

The Kaiju are alive in the crackling light of the shower. You wonder how he would look with Jaegers in their stead.

You chase that thought and make quick work of his pants - so tight, ever so damn tight - and you want him here and now but he is in a teasing mood.

He wants a proper shower. You step back and enjoy the show; his eyes are still locked on yours, but your gaze is wandering, following his hands like a moth to a flame or trying to register the outline of his smug smile.

Smug?

Smug.

Oh, but that won’t do. That won’t do at all.

You take the soap from his hands. Your bathroom, your rules.

The water is freezing, your hands are cold, but his skin is burning.

The foam of the soap spreads over him, like the white crest of the waves wash over the battlefield.

You’ve seen him before. You’ve seen all of him at this point. You’ve seen him crying and begging and demanding and everything in between, you’ve seen all limbs, curvatures and deeps, but never like this.

Never naked, defenseless yet bold, a raw force of a man, the unbreakable strength of a human soul.

He won’t stop looking at you. You can’t stop looking at him.

He’s ugly, too chubby in some parts, too toned in others; you want him.

He’s everything you’ve always despised. Yours to play with.

The light is flickering.

Darkness, light.

Hair shining with dampness.

Darkness, light.

Black nail polish on pale skin. His palms flat against the wall.

Darkness, light.

The curve of his arse, the way his shoulders slump when he rests his face against the wall, arching his back.

Trapezius. Teres Major. Teres Minor. Latissimus Dorsi.

Raythe, Clawhook, Spinejackal. Insurrector.

Darkness, light.

Darkness.

_ _ _

He’s here. His hands are on your hips and his teeth on your neck.

You close your eyes.

You’re alive, and wanting.

_ _ _

This is the closest to gentle you’ll get for a while.

It doesn’t matter.

_ _ _

Work, fuck, work, fuck, work.

Sometimes you also shout at each other, because he is wrong, and how can he be so wrong when his letters used to be so - ah, you hadn’t thought about those for a while.

Bad, Newt, bad.

The letters were nothing but a fluke, the fantasy of a heart that could beat alongside yours, a memory from when the world was only just beginning to end and you still had feelings. You should have burnt them.

Why are they all stacked in a shoebox under your bed?

_ _ _

They don’t seem to notice your little arrangement. And if they do, they don’t comment on it. This is, you tell yourself, for the very best. Not only is it counter-productive to conduct interpersonal relationships of that nature in your very workplace, but your reputation - well, it wasn’t so long ago that you found ‘QUEERMO’ tagged in big pink letters on your locker, and you’re not sure you’d like to repeat the experience.

Well, at least you’re doing it in a bed, now. You struggle to think that they could have walked in on you anytime, in the lab, the corridor, the Jaeger bay. (You just hope they erased the security feed.)

What they do notice, though, is that you two have stopped fighting - a positive development fondly recalled by anyone who watched you throw a chair above his head in the middle of the mess.

_ _ _

Note to self: keep on calling him “sugarnuts” in public, it makes for great ragesex. 

Corollary: work on your projectile-dodging abilities.

_ _ _

This could be nice. You could get used to this.

He’s a man-child with the maturity of a twelve-year-old and the body of a Rodin - but the way he moans your name - he’s too loud and too gaudy - but when he looks up to you, his face between your thighs - he’s nothing like numbers, nothing you could ever have learnt.

So are the Kaiju. So is the Breach. So is keeping the world safe.

Well, you’ve always been up for a challenge. Isn’t it nice?

You’re working better than ever before.

Yes. You could get used to this.

_ _ _

Work, fuck, work, fuck, work.

Fuck. Work. Fuck. And work. And then fuck again.

This could actually, well, work.

Your mind feels clearer, now. Your indomitable emotions have found a new outlet. Oh, you still hate him, of course you do. He’s an insufferable bastard, a dirty old man, his predictions are nothing more than chalkdust and willpower, but he’s here (and he’s queer, ahah), and you know you can rely on him - his appetite for your ass can never be satiated - to release your tension - the tingling that creeps down your stomach - before going back to being a rockstar, what with all the sex, drugs and Kaiju guts you’ve been getting recently.

A rockstar who’s about to save the world. Just they wait. You’re onto something.

_ _ _

You should have known that it would come to this.

You should have known.

You are an utter, absolute, complete idiot.

You can’t breathe, only cry. You loathe your own self with all the hatred and contempt you can muster. Your hands grips firmly the edges of your desk. You try to stand upright, you try to control.

You can’t. You are crying.

You, of all people. You are crying.

Alone, thanks god, in the relative privacy of your room - you couldn’t bear for anyone to see you right now - but the door creaks softly behind you - please let not him come please let not him find me like this please I am begging you oh god please of all people not him Ich will nicht, dass er mich so sieht I do not want Ich will nicht I do not want alles was ich will ist sterben - 

“... Hermann?”

_ _ _

It’s a clusterfuck, it’s a mess, it’s your fault, and that’s how it started.

You were walking back from the mess, and he was with you, of course, and you were arguing and bickering and does this man have an opinion about everything? Can you really hate Wong Kar Wai? Turns out you really can, but that’s not the point.

The point is that some people don’t care about Korean cinematographers as much as they care about thinking you’re a nerdy little shit and letting you know. Loudly. With an explicit hand gesture that said ‘come at me, bro’.

Well, frankly, you were going to let it slide - not like you’ve heard it all, eh? - and go on your merry way, until they went, hey, suck my dick, fucker, and…

You had never seen a grown man step back in fear before. Well, you had, but you never imagined you would see Hermann Gottlieb stepping in front of you, regal, handsome, looking at those poor guys with enough scorn to send them back crying to their cribs.

At that moment, you can’t deny it, you were in awe.

In literal awe.

A little.

Unfortunately, they weren’t half as impressed as you were, or quickly recovered from it; ensued an exchange of a few very well-chosen, very polite words between your partner and those gentlemen, at the end of which Hermann informed them that nobody in their right minds would even accept to be paid to suck their dicks, and could they please go and humiliate themselves elsewhere?

Of course, by that time you had realised that the assholes were drunk as skunks, which you should have seen sooner, you should have, you should have seen a lot of things sooner, but it’s too late now, it’s too late and -

Calm down, Newt.

You were in the corridor and you reached out but you were too slow to keep him away from harm, from the bastard’s punch, that is. A mean right hook that you totally didn’t expect Hermann to dodge. (French kickboxing, you’ll learn later. His father had weird parenting ideas.)

“Oh, gentlemen.”

Was he… seriously taking his parka off? Cracking his knuckles, his cane hanging off his elbow?

\- Dude, no, stop this, the guys train with Hansen, they’re going to destroy you.

You’re going to get absolutely crushed, and I can run, I can escape, but you -

Oh boy.

There was a very distinct, very particular sound to a bone being broken under a vicious but effective blow - and it echoed in your head, it gave you wings, and the guy staggered, his friend stepped back again, you could have made it, but the man was a jerk and fought back.

They fought back. Against Hermann Gottlieb.

Hermann. Your… Hermann.

You saw red. You saw black. All the colours and the noises and the pain, the blood, the spit and the sweat. Hermann could hold his own, of course he did. You couldn’t believe it, but he did. (Now you remember the cane against your throat.)

And, well, you’ve grown up in the scene, of course you’d know how to kick.

But he did half of the work, and now he sports the bruisings to prove it.

Yet now is a mess, so back, back, back to then - if you think hard enough, things might just change.

Back then, you didn’t think. You didn’t think Hermann Gottlieb had it in him. You didn’t think he’d fight. You didn’t think he’d fight for you.

Don’t be ridiculous, Newt. He didn’t fight _for_ you.

But he did fight, and you fought alongside him, and you helped him hobble to your room. And he was grumbling all the way, and you were trying not to laugh, and you sort of wished he was trying not to smile. Because fighting with your back against his, hearing the whooshing sound of his cane past your ear as you dive to kick their ankles, it felt a little bit like sex, and sex was good.

You thought, the sex’s going to be amazing after this.

It sure was, you fucking dipshit. 

You brought him back to your room - maybe that’s where it all went wrong - and you pressed him against the wall, and you think he might have tried to say something then, some delicate description of what he had in mind for you and the rest of the evening, which got lost in a moan - and let’s be honest, by then your dick was on fire and so was your brain.

You kissed his lips and licked his wounds, savouring the taste of blood and sweat on your tongue.

“Dude,” you whispered in his ear. “Dude, that was so hot.”

He smiled and answered, “I’m the only one whose dick you get to suck, Newton.”

_ _ _

He was yours. Your unruly, immature, mettlesome little child. Yours to bend and break and satisfy.

Alas, no more. You had to go and ruin it all.

_ _ _

He pushed you back, laid you down on the bed, climbed above you. You sent his sweater vest flying and took off your pants as he unbuttoned your shirt. His fingers were fast and precise; his skin was battered and bruised, bloody and grazed. The smell of both your sweats blended in the musty scent of your room; you couldn’t have said if it was night or day, warm or cold.

Your mouth watered with anticipation, yet you restrained yourself. You took a second to soak it in, to really look at him, towering over you in the half-light of your room, his features precisely chiselled by the green glow of your monitor. He was weird and ugly, all of him, from his undercut, lamest you’ve ever seen, to his face, all rough edges and asymmetry; from his torso, too thin, too pale, almost white, almost marble-like, down to that discrete line of brown hair…

You’ve never taken anyone’s pants off that fast before.

_ _ _

How fitting that, mirroring your first encounter, you should struggle for power once more; he was eager, that time, too. So eager, so willing to please you and himself, pushing through hatred and disdain and - but you digress.

Once more, Dr. Gottlieb. One last time.

Gripped wrists and barren teeth, but no blood, no rage; no control and no subjugation. Something akin to playful roughness. Perhaps the darkness felt merciful; perhaps it felt kind. Your bites didn’t sting, his scratches didn’t burn. Or was it the other way round? You don’t remember anymore.

Concentrate. Focus. Remember.

He rose and pressed you against the wall. Your leg hurt, but you forgot the pain soon enough when the tip of his tongue went all the way up in your inner thigh. Always up it went, and you clenched your fist not to moan, and he grabbed you, licked you, swallowed you, sucked you, and he’d stop every time you’d get too close; and he resisted when you pulled his hair and refused to comply when you ordered. He - with his tongue - his fingers - the palm of his hands - played you like a violin, frustration and pleasure, satisfaction and torture, until you saw stars, stars that wrote his name behind the shut curtain of your eyes.

You collapsed to your side, out of breath, sweaty and sticky and properly repugnant. It felt hot, and warm, and wet, and you should have gotten up for a shower, you really should have, but you couldn’t bring yourself to; and he crawled back to your face to lick the sweat off your stomach, your chest, your neck, your cheeks; and he kissed you, and his tongue tasted of sweat and semen, of grease and blood, of him and you.

He was smiling. He was smiling, this ravenous, mad smile of his, and you cradled him, you wrapped your arm around his neck as he settled on his back and you drew your last strength to nibble his ear and resist the tantalising promise of sleep. You still had work to do.

He slid his arm beneath you, bringing you closer. You let your fingers slowly run down his chest; his skin was burning. You caressed the inked Kaiju in the half-light, half-guessing the colours you already knew by heart.

So flawed. So beautiful.

He moaned when you bit his ear, when you twisted and pinched his flesh; but you both knew what you were in for.

Heat and expectation - the walls seemed to close around you - the light faded away - there was nothing but the boiling heat of his skin, the erratic rhythm of his breathing.

You lowered your fingers a little more. He spread his legs; you took your hand off him for a second, to run your hand through the mess on your stomach, still sticky and wet, before going back to him.

(Normal people usually went for lube. Neither of you had ever been very much normal.)

He was already touching himself, your naughty, naughty boy. You slapped his hand away.

“So eager, Dr Geiszler, so impatient…”

He was hard and swollen, veins throbbing under your touch - feather-light, at first, yet enough to feel his pulse. And you took your time with him, applying to his pleasure and the denying of it all the knowledge and thoroughness you were able to muster. He squirmed and writhed, grunting in his desperation, and you took your time still. You kept him over that edge for as long as the intimate knowledge of his body and his sensibilities allowed you to. You pulled your fingers away and whispered the sweetest orders in his ear; you watched as his eyes turned black in the half-dark of his room, as he became the one Leviathan only you could tame.

And when he came you might have stopped breathing yourself.

_ _ _

Softness. Warmth.

You woke up in the night, your eyes tight shut with sleep.

You didn’t realise, you didn’t want to - and now it’s too late, back, back, you want to go back - but you were holding him, your left arm lazily wrapped around his stomach, fingers spread over his torso - you could count his ribs and he probably doesn’t eat enough but that’s besides the point - and it felt all peaceful, quiet and nice. Soft. Warm.

You pulled him ever so closer and fell back into blissful unconsciousness.

_ _ _

Soft. Warm.

As you emerged from your slumber, you felt his hand stroking your chest to the rhythm of your breathing. Your first thought - your very first thought! - was to grab it and raise it to your heart, you degenerate. You felt good, under his arm. You felt safe, protected; you felt better than you had felt in… that you had ever felt.

You opened your eyes with a panicked gasp. Where were you? What happened? This wasn’t your bed. This wasn’t - you were prisoner, entangled in limbs that definitely weren’t yours. Panic rose in you like a beast, all claws and fangs, anxiety roaring in your veins.

You didn’t dare to move. The air felt stale and mushy; your body was sticky with dried sweat.

Awful. Disgusting. Horrible.

What happened? This wasn’t what you wanted.

Of course, you had wanted him. You pulled his hair as he swallowed you whole, you clenched your fingers around his jaw as he pleasured himself and came over you, yet…

 _This_ wasn’t what you wanted. The morning-after, the sleeping-next-to-each-other, the waking-up-together. No, this was all wrong, wrong, wrong!

Fraction of a contentment you didn’t deserve. Glimpse of an implausible future.

There was, somewhere, a parallel universe where you got to feel that way every single morning, and perhaps had been for years. The low snoring, the caress of his hair on your neck, the way your legs just clicked, entwined, perfectly compatible, like two pieces of the same puzzle. There was a version of you that got to enjoy it all.

Well, that one version definitely wasn’t working hard to save the world, he didn’t have a reputation, oh, he probably got along better with his father and he had no problem with his legs! He didn’t mind such peaceful mornings, because he was used to them! Because he knew they would always come to him!

But he wasn’t you. You aren’t and have never been the sort to be lovingly awoken by your sleeping lover. You didn’t know how it felt.

And this… This was… This was soft, and warm, and happy, and wrong. Now that you did know, you decided that you hated it.

Yes. You decided. Decisions could keep you sane. You had to make decisions, to draw lists, to keep control. First, you had to get out of here.

Keep calm. Keep calm and run away.

You felt sick; your heart pushed around the edges of your lips, but you swallowed back whatever was coming from the depths of your guts and untangled yourself from his legs and arms.

Keep calm. You were up now and he hadn’t awoken. Good.

You couldn’t get back to your room naked, so you gathered your clothes, keeping your maddening, conflicting emotions on a leash. You had slept! Naked! Next to him! The scheming little - no, it wasn’t his fault. It was yours. It was yours and you knew it.

Everything in this was your fault, wasn’t it?

Keep calm. In your haste, you grabbed his tie along with your blazer and forgot your handkerchief.

The pain in your leg fed from the turmoil of your soul. You got dressed and hobbled out of the room, dishevelled, unshaven, the sheer image of a madman.

Mad, mad, mad, you felt completely mad. You kept it together long enough to reach your quarters.

_ _ _

You woke up to an empty bed. The wall was cold against your back, yet the cover was still warm above the empty space in front of you.

Hermann. He was… You two did… You had never _slept_ together before.

And you were almost sure you spooned him in your sleep. 

Yeah.

Awkward.

You turned on your back, you yawned, you tried to spread all over the mattress; to reconquer the space of your bed.

His side - no, not his side; the side _where he had slept_ \- still smelled like him. You could still feel his hands on yours, the curve of his back against your chest.

You cursed under your breath. You massaged your temple. You tried to understand why it felt wrong. You’ve had “mutually-beneficial arrangements” before, no big deal, yeah? People never stayed. It’d always been this way.

Why would you ever want this to be different? Did you really see yourself kissing Hermann Gottlieb awake?

Yeah, you did.

Let’s never admit this.

To anyone.

Ever.

(If you rewind your memories slowly enough, you can pinpoint the exact moment you started to question your life choices, right after the one where you realised you were fucked beyond measure.)

You cursed louder and tried to get up. Your head felt heavy and pounding; the bruises from the day before hurt and stung and bite. Thinking was not going to be a thing today. You wouldn’t have survived so long with that crazy brain of yours without learning how to push things back once in a while, and it seemed today was going to be one of those low-key dissociating ones. Not bad, considering the alternatives, considering how long you’ve been off your meds.

You went for something to drink - so fucking thirsty - and found a gulp’s worth of cold coffee at the bottom of a dirty, two-day old cup. It felt fitting, although it tasted twice as bad as it looked. You paced your room, you went for some clothes. You could have showered - boy, you stank - but you wanted some breakfast first, and the smell would have kept people away. As you foraged for your shirt and - yeah, clean pants, you were going to need clean pants - you found a white, rectangular piece of cloth, that still smelled like old-fashioned softener. And soft it was, indeed, under your thumb, as you slowly went over the initials embroidered in a corner - H. G.

Talk about awkward, yeah. He didn’t forget it on purpose, did he? Your tie appeared to be missing, too.

Ugh, breakfast would have to wait. Having such a mundane, innocent belonging of his in your bedroom felt even more wrong than all the rest combined. You did not know why, it just did, so you passed on the first top you could reach and made for his quarters.

You did not expect to find the door open, and him crying, out of breath, leaning against a wall, knuckles white around your tie - but here you are.

Deal with it.

_ _ _

You hate yourself so much. You hate yourself so much it hurts. You hate yourself so much you wish you could die on the spot.

They don’t need you to save the world. Your predictions are not certain enough. They’ve never needed you. You are a waste of space and oxygen, a disappointment to your father and your own potential.

And now you are a disappointment to him as well.

He looks at you from the doorway, steps in, closes the door behind him. His faces is widened by - you read disgust, but it might be surprise. You want to speak, you want to send him away, you try to straighten your back, but you’re holding onto that wall for a reason. Your cane is too far, your leg gives out, he closes the space between you and you fall into his arms.

You’ve just been rescued, damsel style, by a greasy, sleazy, disgusting little cockroach of a man whose body odour makes you gag; panting and clumsy, you break free from that repulsing embrace and crawl to your bed.

You are the most pathetic human being you’ve ever had the displeasure to meet.

“Are we… going to talk about this?”

_ _ _

You look at him. He looks at you. Things are going reeeally well here.

He doesn’t answer. He closes his eyes. He tries to breathe. He settles on the edge of his bed, his leg must hurt like a bitch. You don’t know what to do. He’s still holding your tie. You’re still holding his handkerchief.

“There is…” how can his diction be so good through such gritted teeth? “... absolutely... nothing... to t-talk about!”

He’s looking at the floor. His eyes go up to his hand, the one that’s still firmly wrapped around your garment.

You didn’t think he could get any paler than this, but he can.

_ _ _

“Okay… hostage exchange, then? Cold war style?”

He reaches out his hand, but not to strike you; he’s holding out your… handkerchief?

Mad, mad, mad. This world has gone mad. You’ve gone mad.

You find the strength to snatch it out of his hands.

It’s yours, it’s yours; a present from Mother-- it shouldn’t be tainted by his touch.

_ _ _

He lets go of your tie and you pick it up from the floor, not really wanting to look at him anymore.

Well, you want to look at him but he’s clenching his handkerchief against his heart with such strength and rage, is that rage, yes, this is rage, does he want to have a go at it again?

You don’t understand anything that’s going on, but there’s no meltdown that a bit of rage sex can’t fix, if the past months are anything to go by. And oh boy, doesn’t this look rough enough. Rough is all you know. You reach out your hand, you brush his cheek, it’s electrifying, yes, this could be, yes, a possible solution -

He slaps your hand away.

“Fass mich nicht an!”

_ _ _

Anger, yes, you need anger.

You need anger and bloody Newton out of your head. Your room. Your life.

Out, out, out.

How could you ever expect anything involving that man to ever go well? It’s time to take control back of your life, your body, your everything. You are master and commander, here.

Even if you stutter and your voice wavers and your throat aches, you are master and commander. Even if you’ve retreated to German as your body fails you once again and shameful, burning tears run down your cheeks.

He doesn’t understand. He cannot understand. His mouth stays open, his eyes wide, he steps back, opens his hands, what, what, isn’t that clear enough?

_ _ _

“Get… out.”

What the fuck?

“Zwischen uns gibt es nichts…”

Well, you’d beg to fucking differ, what about all the fucking and shouting and saving the world, but-

“Außer der Arbeit verbindet uns nichts!”

Okay, that one was clear enough. Nothing but the work, then, the ghost of your tie on his floor and the touch of his handkerchief in your hand.

“Get out!”

Okay, okay, okay.

You get out before he gets full murderous rampage on you, and you’re crying in the corridor as you make for the closest cache of alcoholic beverage you can find. Actually, no, you’re not crying, because you have no reason to, and soon enough you’re drunk and sweet-talking the Tang Wei into introducing their cute friends to you, what, it’s nine in the morning but it gotta be happy hour _somewhere_.

_ _ _

It’s over. A footnote, soon to be forgotten. A fluke.

It feels strange. It feels cold. You are actually being almost polite to each other. Almost. Bearable, at the least. You are being bearable to each other.

It feels weird. Sometimes you catch yourself feeling his tongue around you again. Sometimes you almost look his way and -

Sometimes you regret.

But you are Hermann Gottlieb, and Hermann Gottlieb doesn’t do regret. Hermann doesn’t plead and doesn’t beg. Hermann covers his elbows and his nose in chalkdust. Hermann predicts the end of the world. A double event.

Hermann has slightly bigger problems than his conflicting emotions. Hermann keeps calm and carries on.

_ _ _

It’s over. Yet another non-break up, because you cannot break something that wasn’t there.

It feels weird. You thought that you were used to it, but you weren’t.People never stay. You certainly don’t wish he would have.

Everything feels a bit pointless for a while. There’s no point in punching him if he won’t take you on a desk afterwards. He doesn’t even threaten you with his cane.

You get used to that feeling, that mellow melancholy beneath the raging fire of your soul, the loneliness beneath the high-pitched squeak of your voice. It’s just… back to the start, yeah. Gotta save the world, yeah.

At least there’s still the Kaiju. You lose yourself in sleepless nights that spread into weeks. Maybe it’s just not melancholy. Maybe you’re in terrible, excruciating pain. You don’t know anymore.

You know that you are Newt Geiszler and that nobody would take Newt for more than a passing distraction, a mere amusement. Newt cracks up the volume, drinks on the job and rocks on.

_ _ _

 

And Newt craves Hermann’s attention but doesn’t get it, so he does the next best thing and Drifts with a Kaiju. 

OK, OK, it may actually be a little more complicated than that. 

Newt craves attention. From anyone. Since the beginning of time. Because he’s a rockstar, and that’s what rockstars do. (He’s also neurodivergent in too many ways to count and off his meds for way too long but, details.)

He couldn’t be the child his parents wanted, he couldn’t be the genius his teachers had hoped for; hell, he couldn’t even be Gottlieb’s fuckbuddy. But here he has a chance. He has a chance at becoming something bigger than himself and his self-worth skyrockets at the idea of a self-sacrificing, meaningful death. 

He’s also pretty damn sure of his theory, but no, nobody ever listens to him; gets him wondering why they pay him— aha, wait, they don’t. They don’t even pay him anymore. 

So this has nothing to do with Hermann, or maybe this has everything to do with Hermann. Newt doesn’t know and refuses to care. 

What he knows is that he’s strapped a makeshift Pons on his head and that once he pushes that trigger, nothing will ever be the same. 

Most probably because he’ll be dead. But then most rockstars are. 

Okay, a little positivity in here: he is confident this is going to work and not half as suicidal as he sounds. This thing’s gonna work. This thing’s gotta work. If anything this thing’s gotta work because it’s going to fry that beautiful sample of a brain and Newt hasn’t got any spare. 

Oh, and if it works, then Hermann will have to shut the fuck up and admit that Newt is right. (Not in that order.) That isn’t exactly what Newt wants, but he’ll happily settle for that. 

One, two, three. Set the thing on top of the other thing, start the recorder. 

He told himself he wouldn’t ramble and he wouldn’t make this about Hermann, so of course, he does. Typical. Just typical. He does wonder, though, if this doesn’t work and he’s found dead cold on the sticky lab floor, will Hermann— 

Yeah. Less dreaming, more sciencing. 

One, two, three, he pushes the trigger and—

Now this is what death must feel like. 

_ _ _ 

There is an interesting disconnection here, a cognitive dissonance of sort. There’s a part of Hermann that sees what can only be a Pons headset on Newton’s head and slowly understands the scene unfolding before him. It’s a sliver of rational thought, soon to be drowned like the rest, in sudden and all-compassing panic. 

Several thoughts come to Hermann at once. 

Item one: He did it. 

Item two: Oh Heavens, he went and did it. 

Item three: Seizure, he’s having a seizure. 

Item four: Hermann’s legs have sprung him into action and onto the floor but his neurons are not processing the usual pain signals.

Item five: Potential consequences of a seizure include brain damage, paralysis… death. 

Item six: There is no item six. 

Item seven: Do not constrict the patient’s movements. Keep them away from sharp objects. Check for a pulse. 

Item eight: Check for a pulse. 

Hermann crashes back to reality. His leg hurts something fierce. The smell of sweat, blood, bile and ammonia are constricting his throat; his eyes are stinging with tears. He swallows back whatever’s coming up at the back of his mouth, he can hear himself talking, but he has no idea what he’s saying. 

He knows that he’s kneeling on the floor. He might have lost his shoe. He’s checking for a pulse. 

There is a thought he cannot bear. 

There is a thought he cannot bear at all. 

So he checks for a pulse. 

It’s useless since Newton is obviously alive, panting and gasping, but Hermann is checking for a pulse. That is what he should do, check for a pulse. That’s something he can do. That’s something he’s doing. He’s checking for a pulse. That’s good.

And there is one. Under Hermann’s hand on Newton’s throat, there is a pulse. 

There is also moaning and ragged breathing which are, actually, signs of the subject being alive and somewhat conscious. 

But there is a pulse. That means Newton is alive. 

Newton is alive and, yes, holding onto him for dear life. His skin is burning and sweaty, his whole body shaking— and there is a pulse. He lives. He lives! He is alive. 

Hermann breathes out a low, shuddering sigh. His memory has always been one of his strengths. It is well-trained, visual, analytic; almost eidetic. And while he is usually glad to count on its abilities no matter the circumstances, he knows it means that this - this vision, Newton seizing in the lab, bloodied nose and trembling limbs - will haunt him for the rest of his days. 

They remain like this for an undetermined amount of time, holding each other. Hermann’s brain violently swings between panic - Newton has Drifted with a Kaiju! He could be dying! He is in need of urgent medical attention! - and relief - Newton is alive! - all the way to rage - How could Newton do such a thing to him? - and sheer terror - Hermann has no idea what to do next. In between those points, his mind is blank. He stands before an empty blackboard, chalk in hand, and he has no idea what comes next. 

His first aid emergency training has taught him that prompt medical attention is needed, which he could have guessed by himself, thank you very much. He is aware he should run to medbay. He dearly wishes he could. But his legs will not do his biddings; he is trapped here, holding Newton and talking to him, whatever it is that he is saying. 

He tries to will his legs into moving. After all the pain they’ve carried him through, to have them fail him now! He has to move. He has to. He…

“... Herms? Hermann?”

“Yes?”

“Hermann,” Newton says, his voice a whispered squeak, “it’s a— it’s a hive mind. The Kaiju. It’s all a— Schwarmbewusstsein. A hive mind. It’s—”

Newton’s voice breaks, his body wrecked by spasms again. Hermann holds him tight, hopes to be minimising damages, tries to kickstart his brain into thinking and his body into reacting.

A preliminary analysis suggests that Newton is not suffering from any of the most apparent and lethal consequences of a seizure. Namely, he isn’t dead and he isn’t too cognitively affected, for all that Hermann can actually process of what he is saying. As long as Hermann holds onto him until the fit passes, he should be alright, and then Hermann can bring him to the nearest medical professional and he himself can indulge in a shower and a cup of tea. And then he will shout at him at the earliest opportunity.

Hermann closes his eyes, breathes. Time dilates as the world remains closed onto them, each of Newton’s gasps, each contraction of his muscles, an eternity of suffering and garbled attempts at talking, the iron grip of his hand on Hermann’s wrist, the blindness and deafness to the world beyond, the bile at the back of Hermann’s throat, the stale and the musk in his nose.

But he never lets go. He finds himself unable to. No matter how lovely the prospects of showers and cups of tea he can conjure for himself, no matter how much he can listen to himself blame Newton for his stupid life choices in the privacy of his head, he does not let go of him. The thought of Newton dying is as unfathomable as the thought of letting go. It doesn’t make any sense, after so many years of so strongly wishing to be free of him, but it still is.

The rest passes in a blur. Once Newton seems stable enough, Hermann helps him up a chair, folds his glasses in his breast pocket and brings him a glass of water, because he thinks if he were to have a seizure those are the steps that he would appreciate. All the while, Newton keeps babbling on about Kaiju and hivemind and the necessity of his talking to Marshall Pentecost _sofort_ , which Hermann opposes on the twofold grounds of Newton not being able to stand on his own and the Marshall supervising the first test run of Miss Mako in Lady Danger. But Newton is adamant and Hermann not presumptuous enough to decide whether the Marshall would find any urgent interest in his hare-brained ideas. Newton did Drift with a Kaiju, after all. If anything the Marshall might want to be informed of that.

An interesting observation comes to him while he strives through the windowless corridors: as his body regains its usual mobility, panic releases its grip on his brain, and terror becomes anger.

_ _ _

Something bites at Newt when Hermann shouts back but it bites harder when Pentecost barks after them. It’s queasy and white hot, a knee-jerk reaction of ‘what the fuck’, but he’s already so hard into dissociating he’s barely noticed it. He knows he’s talking, he knows he’s here, but he is also not here. He’s still there. Wherever that place is, beyond the breach, in the blue of the Anteverse. There’s something in him that wants— *he* wants to go back. He wants to see it again He wants that perfect blue and that sense of belonging; the hivemind and the knowledge that he is as alien to them to them as they are to him: they cannot judge him if they do not have anything but complete lack of understanding of what a human being is.

He talks. He talks. He is talking. There’s a part of him in the lab with Pentecost and Gottlieb. Another part of him is… He doesn’t know. Might be gone, might be lost forever.

Might still be floating in the kaleidoscope of the Anteverse.

The thing is, he can’t stop and think, because if he does he’s going to give them the drop to end all drops, and he can’t afford that. Adrenaline’s kicking and anxiety’s flaring up, but he’s dissociating so that’s okay. His whole body, his face, his mind; he sees everything through a filter, like it doesn’t belong to him. Not really. Not fully. He’s a third-party observer. He’s just there for the ride, man. He’s just someone who’s Drifted with a Kaiju.

He thinks it’s pretty sweet.

And Newt tells them everything, because talking helps, proving Hermann wrong helps more, and being told there’s another brain sample somewhere helps the most of all.

There’s one thing he does not tell them, though, it’s that in the Drift he didn’t feel so alone, among all the things he did feel there, and that whatever he was craving before he still needs more than he needs air. Fortunately, the next few hours are going provide the sort of world-ending distractions that keep him from wallowing too much on his self-loathing.

He rides the high of being right, and he rides the high of being promised more. He rides all the highs, because if he ever stops, then he’s going to drop. And he’s going to drop hard. He’s going to drop so hard he’s hoping for a massive celebration after this because he’s going to need everyone else too busy to talk to him while he tries to unfold his brain out through his nose and tangle it up there again.

Has he already had that thought, that he was going to drop hard? He’s going to drop so, so hard. But it’s okay. He’s riding that high. He’s going on full rockstar mode and nothing can stop him.

_ _ _

“Newton!” Hermann has risen from his seat before he can even think about doing so, reaching out for Newton’s arm. He’s stayed put until the Marshall’s left, but he cannot take this any longer. “Are you seriously—” 

“Fass mich nicht an,” Newton answers, frozen on his way to the door. Hermann’s fingers wrap around the creased leather of his jacket. “Hey, I said, fass mich nicht an!”

He yanks his arm free; Hermann cradles his hand to his chest, knuckles tightening on the handle of his cane. He gives two short taps on the ground. His jaw is starting to ache from all that clenching. 

“Are you seriously considering,” he starts again, “the—” 

Newt turns back with an accusatory finger. 

“I’m sorry, what happened to, what was it? ‘Außer der Arbeit verbindet uns nichts’? Was zum Teufel kümmert's dich dann? Go back to your math, Wichser—” 

“You speak German like a child,” Hermann hisses. 

“—some of us are actually getting shit done. And at least I don’t speak English like a caricature of an Alan Turing cosplay, okay?” 

Newton slams the door shut, which Hermann has to admit is a feat of strength given the weight and size of the thing. He sighs; his shoulders slouch, his head drops. He can feel his whole body folding on himself. So much worry then so much anger leave him drained and powerless. He needs a sit-down and his pain medication, the extra strong one; but if he sits down he fears he shan’t be able to get up again. If he but takes the time for a cup of tea, he fears he shall not find it in himself to not make a second one right away, and then when would he ever get back to work? 

There’s a flurry of footsteps in the corridor and Newt opens the door again with a groan, readjusting his glasses before pointing at Hermann again. “A _failed_ caricature of an Alan Turing cosplay!” he shrieks, with one of these mad grins of his. “The worst, dude!” 

And suddenly he’s gone again, door ajar and Hermann’s patience in shambles. Oh, but that brat will get what’s coming to him— except that he will not, obviously. Hermann feels his shoulders slack even more and hobbles to the makeshift kitchen corner. Tea it is, then. Newton has gone mad, or rather madder than usual, and while Hermann would never dare to go against the Marshall’s orders… Well, he thinks it is ridiculous, really. To send him to the bone slums, in that state, for the purpose of dealing with black market operatives! Newton, who cannot even haggle egg waffles on the street! 

Hermann tsks, his hands on autopilot. There is a state of mindfulness induced by tea-making he doesn’t dream of reaching today. Newton is right in his rudeness, though. No matter how much it displeases Hermann to admit it, he does care; but he has no reason to. They have never disliked each other so much as they do now. And yet the thought of letting him go and Drift with another half-dead kaiju brain does not sit well with him. Hermann might not be the resident biologist, but he can run the calculations well enough. The odds of surviving a second kaiju-human Drift are close to null for any given individual, let alone one with Newton’s oh so particular neurodivergence. Not impossible, so few things ever are, but very much implausible. Even a three-way Drift with another human to share the neural load—

Hermann’s whole body freezes, the cup so very close to his lips all he can smell is the delicate aroma of premium Jasmine tea. 

A three-way Drift. With another human to share the neural load. 

He puts the cup down, licks his lips, eyes reading along the equations projected on the blackboard of his mind. 

A three-way Drift. Two humans, the way Jaeger pilots do, and one half-dead Kaiju. The odds of surviving are barely higher, but while any mathematician worth their while could do Hermann’s work, albeit slower, nobody can replace Dr. Geiszler. 

Hermann limps to his desk, body sluggish and numb as if barely roused from sleep, and brings up schematics of the Pons on his personal workstation. He is no Caitlin Lightcap but he *is* an engineer. Newton will contact Loccent when he acquires his damned sample in order to have his makeshift Pons system brought to him. Of course, Hermann should run his idea by the Marshall before putting it into practice, but it doesn’t harm to be ready when the time comes— and he’d rather let the man focus on his daughter for now. 

The cup of tea is cooling down on the counter of the kitchenette. The thuds of the keyboard, the scraping of the chalk on the blackboard and the faint buzzing of the defective ceiling lamp organically merge into half of the usual sound background of the lab. It’s missing Newton’s incessant muttering to be truly familiar, it’s missing his noisy fidgeting and his constant pacing. Hermann had once complained that the only time the man stood still was when he was dissecting. He has also complained at length about his own inability to focus in anything but complete silence. He now finds himself dearly missing the audible component of Newton’s chaos; now he can hear himself think, and he finds his thoughts to be greatly upsetting. 

A three-way Drift. With a Kaiju and the last person on earth whom he’d like to open his brain to. 

He isn’t sure which prospect is the most terrifying, but he has no time to deal with any sort of emotional response. Not with the problem at hand. It does not matter who he is or what he wants. Hermann is a soldier. If Operation Pitfall succeeds, the world may be saved; if the Marshall believes another human-kaiju Drift is necessary, so be it. 

The tea is cold on the counter, absolutely forgotten. Hermann drums his fingers on the edge of his desk as he reviews his dataset one last time before going to submit it to the Marshall’s approval. All his life he has sought quiet, lonesomeness and peace; today he is finding it quite suffocating.

_ _ _

It’s raining outside the Shatterdome - it’d be a little weird if it was raining inside, but he’d roll with it - and Newt reaches the bone slums drenched and with sore ankles from almost-slipping-down-on-his-nose a couple of times and appropriately-humiliating-falling-on-his-ass-in-earnest once. In front of the cute street food vendor he’s always letting overprice him, no less. It’s a good thing there’s an apocalypse going on, because that’s the sort of blow to his reputation and dignity only death and-slash-or saving the world can soften. But then he’s going to meet an actual black market kaiju samples dealer, a known member of the criminal world, and boy doesn’t he want that childish excitement to carry him over all the way to the end. It’s good to focus on that sort of thing, he thinks - ‘you must remain mindful of the present’, one of his therapists once said, or perhaps several of his therapists, several times - because if he doesn’t… because when he doesn’t…

It flashes before his eyes, the blue-white-grey of the Anteverse. Sphincters and giant eyes, masters with needles and knives for arms. A lifetime of pain. A lifetime of loneliness. Born to die, in a cool but tragic way.

That’s pretty much what’s in store for him too, anyway. He’s going to die in a really cool but really tragic way. He can’t process it; he’s not an idiot, he knows he can’t afford a second Drift, especially not so close from the first one; and no matter how little he cares, death is still a thing. A scary, un-bullshitable, un-outsmartable sort of thing. But it’s okay, because he isn’t thinking about it. He’s thinking he wants it. He wants to feel it again. He's thinking about that thing he found in the Drift, that aftertaste of the hivemind, that feeling of belonging. And where to find that stupid gang sign in the overcrowded, rainy streets. 

Hannibal Chau’s Emporium feels like a very expensive, very nice toy store, one Newt wouldn’t mind spending all his savings in; Hannibal Chau himself feels like a very uncouth, very normie sort of bully, one Newt isn’t sure he’s actually going to get along with except that, one, that doesn’t matter since he never gets along with anyone, two, he’s kind of spilling the beans to him anyway. All the beans, all at once - well, except the bit where he’s recently been not-dumped by his lab partner - because he needs it out, and he needs it out now. He needs someone to know he’s Drifted with a Kaiju and not react like he’s a madman or a troublesome private. Newt needs someone, anyone, to see how awesome it bloody is, it might be the crowning jewel of his sciencing career! And if it has to be Mr Sell-You-Kaiju-Bone-By-The-Kilogram, then so be it, but Newt’s not going down without one last-ditch attempt at recognition, is he? 

Turns out he isn’t, because Chau isn’t very impressed, and then the kaiju alarms start blaring. Once... Twice.

It might be a little bit of Newt’s fault, since he did go and Drift with a Kaiju, a little bit, but it doesn’t matter, because, one, he can’t die before he’s gotten his bloody sample, two— 

Oh, shit. _What if Hermann was right?_

_ _ _

This is not the first time in his career Hermann doesn’t know whether to wish he is right or hope to be wrong. His friends - his friends! - are drowning in the dark void of the sea and that imbecile of a xenobiologist is fooling around with an unrepentant malefactor as Otachi is wreaking havoc in the city. 

Fear, grief, anger; it all must step aside when duty calls. And it does. So help him, but it does. He pushes it all back, the same way he has always pushed everything back, the same way Newton was the only thing he never could quite repress out of his mind, and he gets to work. He still has to adjust the Pons system to accommodate two human brains and a kaiju one and have it ready to be transported as soon as Newton calls— if Newton calls. 

When Newton calls. 

There is a terrible handful of minutes, to him they last three days, when Sasha Kaidonovsky is dead, Alexis Kaidonovsky is dead, Tang Wei Cheung is dead, Tang Wei Hu is dead, Tang Wei Jin is dead. When Miss Mori and Mr Beckett are still fighting, but heavens know for how long, and it could very be the end. Yet still Newton is not calling. 

And in that terrible handful of minutes, Hermann prays. He hasn’t prayed since childhood, but the words, the thoughts, they come to him all the same. 

‘Let him live’, his heart prays. 

‘If I may not be able to carry alone the burdens of this world, then may I be at least allowed to do my part, and to do it well.’

‘Let him live, that idiot, so that we may save this wretched world.’

‘Let him live, so that I may save him, from himself if I must.’

‘Let him live, so that I may be saved.’ 

Newton still is not calling.

_ _ _

Newt must live.

First, he must live because he’s so close to the exact way he wants this to go, and he isn’t letting anyone rain on his parade, not here, not now.

Secondly, he must live because he’s an animal, that’s just his survival instinct keeping him on his feet and hopefully elbowing his way to salvation.

Thirdly, he’s broken his glasses, but that’s got nothing to do with his will to live.

Cause he’s just seen one— he doesn’t know how many tons of awesome, but that’s got to be _at least_ a Cat IV— he’s just seen one up close, he’s just seen a motherfucking Kaiju and he is now very sure he needs to live so that he can remember how amazing that was later. The way she moved! No, he can’t die now; even through his broken glasses, it looked so much better than through salvaged camera footage.

Also, there’s nothing heroic, nothing rockstar-ish in dying in a public shelter, surrounded by an angry mob very rightfully aware that he is the cause of all this. The Kaiju are looking for him. The same way he only needs to blink - he never wants to blink again - to see the Anteverse, they only need to blink to see him, don’t they? He thinks he can sense them looking for him. He thinks they can sense him trying to escape them.

That’s when he’s _inside_ the shelter that he realises his mistake. Stupid primate brain. There’s no way out. He might never had outrun it, but he could have… He could have at least called Hermann, and then what… and then what? And then what, he doesn’t know, because then the ceiling starts breaking and there is just

no word for what’s happening.

_ _ _

Newton calls.

Hermann wouldn’t assume he understands everything, but Newton calls, and the Marshall gives Hermann his order, and that is all that matters. By then the anger, the fear and the grief are so well-repressed at the bottom of him that he does not think he shall ever feel anything again.

_ _ _

The world comes into focus again under the rain-drenched neon night of Hong Kong City. Newt doesn’t know how he’s gotten a PONS machine here in the middle of the fray, but it doesn’t matter, because it’s there, it works, and he’s going to fry his brain but who even cares at this point?

He’s told off Chau, he’s also seen him eaten by a Kaiju, actually he’s seen a lot of people eaten by the same Kaiju today, that too does look different than on the camera footage, and he’s even learnt a thing or two about skinmites, which is lovely but not the point, and could his brain focus for once? He doesn’t want to be thinking about skinmites in ammonia, he wants to be thinking about Hermann. No! No, he doesn’t want to be thinking about Hermann, because now it happens that Hermann wants to Drift with him, of all things, and—

All things considered, letting Doctor Hermann Gottlieb have a peek at what’s inside his brain only sounds relatively better an outcome than frying it.

Still.

He didn’t expect it. He’s gotta hand it to the man; he’s got balls.

Uh, he’s thought that before.

Which is also the sort of thing he doesn’t want to think about when he’s going to Drift with Hermann.

They’re kind of meant to poke through the hivemind and try to save the world, not to make sure they both hate each other as much as they think they do. Details.

_ _ _

(Hermann is so silly, oh my god. What an old man. ‘By Jove’, really?)

_ _ _

They Drift.

_ _ _

The helicopter ride back to the Shatterdome could be many things. They are still connected, bonded, merged, their emotions, memories and feelings ebbing and flowing from one to the other.

And it is, indeed, painful, and elating, and horrible, and liberating, and terror itself; all at the same time. The human mind is not made for such a three-way connection; its sense of self shatters, its limits expand. It stands forever marked, maimed, shaken by the experience.

They’ve hung in there pretty well, for now. Adrenaline is what kept them on their feet; they need to tell LOCCENT that Operation Pitfall is probably the worst idea since they laid the first brick of the Wall.

They’ve also become such experts at repressing their emotions— they should get a degree in that, really. But the ride back, the ride back to the ‘dome, if only a few minutes long, is too long already. It’s long enough for them to fully realise, comprehend, assess what just happened; to digest the fact that they Drifted with a Kaiju, with each other; to try and dissect what they saw in the fluorescent blue sea of their lives, and there’s so much, so much in there that Newt starts with what hurts the most: they’ve lost five Jaeger pilots.

The Tang Wei were nice, cool kids.

The Kaidonovskys were Hermann’s friends.

And they’re dead, they’re dead, possibly, probably, because someone decided to Drift with a tiny bit of Kaiju brain that was possibly, probably still connected to its hivemind. It’s an horrific, inhumane prospect when you think of all the other “half-dead” samples he’s worked on over the years, but still not as bad as the idea, overwhelming, all-consuming, the sheer certainty of it, that they are dead because of him.

It’s easier to think about what hurts the most, because beneath the wave of blue-tainted guilt Hermann cannot help but sense all those things said and unsaid; what he saw in the Drift, what he did not see. Thousands of answers, answers he cannot tell if he’s glad to have, answers he cannot tell if he regrets to have. Data he doesn’t know how to interpret. Data he wishes he didn’t know how to interpret. To find himself with such intimate knowledge of Newton’s thoughts and feelings is distasteful; the familiarity is unbearable. There is no hiding his most secret thoughts, because he knows the man has seen some of them. And he’s seen some of his and he wishes, oh, how he wishes the salvation of the world had not come to such a sacrifice! 

They do not talk much on the way back. Their thoughts seem to talk in their steads. And they say: ‘let us pretend this did not happen, shall we?’

And they say: ‘yeah, let’s.’

Agreement at last, at the end of the world. 

_ _ _

They reach Loccent on time. 

The breach is closed. 

Miss Mori and that one annoying Ranger live. 

The world is saved. 

The war is over. 

_ _ _

And in hindsight you’ve known it for a while, now— the war’s not the only thing that’s over. 

That’s when it stops.

You think that’s when it begins, when you fall into a touch that is neither possessive nor hateful, when you can’t help but smile to each other, but it’s not. 

That’s when it _stops_.

That very exact moment when the contact is lost between your two bodies, when his warmth still lingers but is already drowned by the warmth of all those other bodies willing to touch you, embrace you, congratulate you. That’s when it stops.

No matter how happy you are, how relieved, how elated. That’s when it stops. 

Because you don’t see him again.

One of you trashes the lab and flees.

One of you pretends he had no idea, that he is astonished, really.

But neither of you are surprised. You take deep breaths and push your glasses up your nose in perfect synchronicity from the other side of the world, and you pretend you don’t know you do. You forget. It’s a process. You willingly, deliberately forget, as much as the world allows you to. There’s been a war, yes. There’s been a Drift, yes. You tell them what they want to hear and they leave you alone. The red circle around your eye disappears.

After a week, you start sleeping again.

_ _ _

You spend ten years of loneliness. But under the dust chalk and the Kaiju blue, under the tweed and the tattoos, you can never quite shake it off— that warmth, that one moment of blissful tenderness.

And for ten years you tell yourself this is as good as it gets.

Until you see him again.

**Author's Note:**

>  **Edit on May 1st 2018** : Just added the cover art I commissioned from the ever so wonderful [@laurenftagnart](https://laurenftagnaty.tumblr.com/)! Please go and show them all the appreciation they deserve. They also write [a very lovely fic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13372728/chapters/30624927/) you might be interested in if you enjoyed this!
> 
> Thank you for reading! Feel free to let me know what you think in the comments. If you'd like to know more about me or my writing, or get in touch directly, you can find me on [tumblr](http://seaweedredandbrown.tumblr.com/) or [twitter](https://twitter.com/overlaured). 
> 
> I would like to acknowledge that writing has always been, for me, a team effort. I started writing this two years ago and I would never have finished this without the help of so many betareaders, friends and handholders. I'd like give a big shout-out to [@raisedbycats](raisedbycats.tumblr.com) for editing this, and [@annethecatdetective](http://annethecatdetective.tumblr.com/) and [@laurenftagn](https://laurenftagn.tumblr.com/) for reminding me that the quality of a work is often more to be found in the eye of the reader than of the writer. 
> 
> Translation of the bits in German: 
> 
> Ich will nicht, dass er mich so sieht - I don't want him to see me like this.
> 
> Fass mich nicht an - Don't touch me.
> 
> Zwischen uns gibt es nichts - There's nothing between us.
> 
> Außer der Arbeit verbindet uns nichts - There's nothing but the work between us.
> 
> Was zum Teufel kümmert's dich dann - Why the fuck do you care?
> 
> Wichser - Wanker.


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